Threats against lawmakers spread after health vote

The Associated PressThis picture provided by the Monroe County Democratic Committee in Rochester, N.Y. shows damage to their office after a glass door was struck with a brick with a note reading "Exremism in Defense of Liberty Is no Vice" sometime from late Saturday. Bricks have been hurled through Democrats' windows, a propane line was cut at the home of a congressman's brother and lawmakers who voted for a federal health care bill have received phone threats in the days before and after passage of the sweeping legislation. WASHINGTON -- A fax bearing the image of a noose. Profane
voice mails. Bricks thrown, a gas line cut. White powder sent to an
office.

Democrats and a few Republicans revealed mounting numbers
and unsettling details of threats against them Thursday in the emotional
aftermath of the passage of the health care overhaul.

Lawmakers
uniformly condemned the harassment, but that's where the agreement
ended. Democrats said Republicans were slow to condemn the vigilantism,
while Republicans said Democrats were playing politics with the threats.

"By
ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to
dangerous levels," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.
"Enough is enough. It has to stop."

At least 10 Democrats now have
reported harassment, including incidents involving at least four of
their offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas. More frequent have been
obscenity-laced, sometime-threatening phone messages. An undisclosed
number of lawmakers have been given increased police protection.

"It
is unfortunate that a small but vocal group of people are using insults
to convey their opinions and alarming that anyone would make threats
against me or my family," said Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Pa.

On
Thursday, two Republicans said they, too, had been menaced.

No
arrests have been reported. A threat to assault a member of Congress in
retaliation for the performance of official duties is punishable by up
to a year in prison.

House historian Fred Beuttler said there have
been few acts of violence against lawmakers over legislation. The worst
occurred in 1954 when four Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House
chamber, wounding five members. A cross was burned on Speaker Sam
Rayburn's front lawn in Texas during debate on civil rights legislation
in the 1960s.

This week, hate-filled rants have been showing up in
voice mails, e-mail boxes and on fax machines of lawmakers since the
House approved the health care bill 219-212 Sunday night. President
Barack Obama signed it into law on Tuesday. A package of fixes to the
new law was winding through Congress Thursday on the brink of a two-week
recess that begins on Monday.

On one point Thursday, there was
bipartisan agreement: No act of Congress -- health care reform or
anything else -- merits threats of violence against lawmakers or their
families.

House Republican leader John Boehner met with Speaker
Nancy Pelosi about the incidents and both condemned them.

Pelosi
was careful to avoid blaming Republicans directly for inciting the
harassment, though she said that words "weigh a ton." Such threats of
retaliation "have no place in a civil debate in our country," she said.

Boehner
followed moments later. While many are angry over the health care
measure, he said, "threats and violence should not be part of a
political debate."

The fact that lawmakers were being harassed
took attention away from the package of fixes to the health care law.

Rep.
Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, released a recording of a voicemail she said she
received in which a man repeatedly accuses Republicans of being racists.

Cantor,
meanwhile, said he has received e-mail threats and that a bullet struck
the window of his campaign office building in Richmond. But Richmond
police said the bullet apparently had been randomly fired skyward. It
hit the front window of a building that houses Cantor's campaign office
as it fell at a sharp downward angle around 1 a.m. Tuesday, police said.

Cantor
said the House's Democratic campaign chairman, Chris Van Hollen, and
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine had incited retribution
against Republicans by telling The Huffington Post that the GOP would
"own" responsibility for retaliatory slurs.

Schmidt, meanwhile,
released a tape of a profanity-laced phone message in which the caller
said Republicans were racists and, referring to an accident two years
ago when she was hit by a car while jogging, said, "You should have
broke your back."

Rep. Anthony Weiner's office in the Queens
borough of New York City received a letter with white powder in it
Thursday that mentioned his vote for the health care bill, the police
department said. Police later said field tests showed the powder was not
hazardous.

In addition to Dahlkemper, Ohio Rep. John Boccieri,
one of eight Democrats who switched to "yes" on the most recent House
vote, said he had received threats.

E-mails sent to Rep. Suzanne
Kosmas, D-Fla., another member who switched her vote, urged her to
commit suicide and said she and her family should rot in hell."

Rep.
Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and chairwoman of an influential
House committee, said someone had left her a voicemail that used the
word "snipers."

Some of the anger spilled over in a flood of
threat-filled phone and fax messages to the office of Rep. Bart Stupak,
D-Mich. Stupak had pledged to oppose the health care package unless
given greater assurance that it would not allow federal funding of
elective abortions. He voted in favor after the administration agreed.

"I
hope you bleed ... (get) cancer and die," one caller told the
congressman between curses.

A fax carried a picture of a gallows
with "Bart (SS) Stupak" on it and a noose. It was captioned, "All Baby
Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand
of God."

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., received a letter that also
contained a shredded American flag. The letter contained expletives and
said, "I will hound you. I will intimidate you and your family."

Senate
Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer told The Associated Press Thursday that
there was "no evidence that annoying, harassing or threatening telephone
calls or e-mails are coordinated."